Chapter 40 - Blood on the Loom
Eleanor froze, staring at me as if I had spoken in an alien language. "What did you say?"
"I said no," I replied, stepping back from the glowing monstrosity of wood and fiber optics. "Look at what this machine has done. It killed my father. It turned my mother into a ghost who uses her own daughters as tactical weapons. It turned Julian into a conspirator, and it turned Sophia into a thief."
"Clara, this isn't a moral exercise!" Eleanor shouted, the calm operative finally shattering under the pressure of imminent annihilation. "If you don't engage the terminal, Bartholomew Vance will breach that door, kill all of us, and use the loom to weaponize the global luxury supply chain! He will control the digital backbone of seventy nations!"
"Then let's destroy it," I said.
Julian raised his head, a faint, bloody smile touching his lips. "She's right, Eleanor. As long as the master loom exists, the cartel will never stop hunting."
"You cannot destroy thirty years of your father's life work!" Eleanor lunged toward me, her hand reaching out to force my palm onto the shuttle rail.
Before she could touch me, Sophia did the unthinkable.
My sister—the vain, cowardly, spoiled sister who had stolen my wedding dress—threw her entire body forward, tackling our mother to the stone floor.
"Leave her alone!" Sophia shrieked, clawing at Eleanor’s tactical gear. "You ruined our lives! You abandoned us for this pile of wood and wire!"
The hydraulic ram struck the boathouse door with a cataclysmic boom. The heavy iron bolts sheared off, and the massive doors blew inward in a cascade of twisted metal and concrete dust.
Through the breach strode Bartholomew Vance, flanked by eight heavily armed private operators in full tactical plate. Behind them walked David Vance, clutching his bruised chest, his face pale with triumphant malice.
"How touching," Bartholomew murmured, stepping over the threshold, his cane clicking against the damp flagstones. "A true family tableau."
Eleanor shoved Sophia off her, rolling across the floor to grab her sidearm, but two suppressed rounds immediately slammed into the stone an inch from her fingers, forcing her to freeze.
"Don't move, Eleanor," David Vance rasped, his voice dripping with venom. "I spent twenty years listening to your lectures on haute couture while you hid the key in your daughter's DNA."
Bartholomew walked slowly toward me, stopping three paces away. He looked at the golden threads of the shuttle rail, then at me.
"Put your hands on the loom, Clara," the old man commanded, his voice as smooth as crushed velvet. "Or I will have my men shoot your sister through both kneecaps, followed by Julian's remaining shoulder, and finally, your mother's throat. You will activate the system for me, or you will watch them bleed out on this stone floor one by one."
I looked into the old man's dead, gray eyes.
I looked at Sophia, who was sobbing silently on the floor, holding her bruised wrist.
I looked at Julian, whose eyes were fixed on me, shaking his head slightly, mouthing the words: *Don't do it.*
"You want the master thread, Bartholomew?" I asked, my voice completely steady.
May you like
"I want what belongs to the Vance dynasty," he replied.
"Then take it," I said, and stepped toward the terminal.
